A hallmark of Kahoot’s learning games platform has been the ability for teachers to create quizzes and games for students to use during class. But “the biggest challenge we see with teachers is time,” Erik Harrell, its CEO, tells EdSurge. For even the biggest Kahoot fans, the time needed to put together unique quizzes can be restrictive. So the company set out to make Kahoot Studio, a curated library of ready-to-play kahoot games for K-12 educators and their students.
Housed in Kahoot’s free app and web-based platform, Studio launched today with kahoots (the company’s name for learning games and quizzes) aligned to Common Core standards for grades 5-12 in math subjects including Algebra, Geometry and fractions. The company will be adding more to the library over time, and plans to have at least 300 kahoots spanning math, science, ELA, history and geography kahoots for K-12 by the end of the year.
Kahoot already offers a public library of more than 20 million games and quizzes created by its users. Studio content, however, will be created with oversight from Kahoot’s staff, a teacher advisory team and an undisclosed third party company. Teachers will still have the ability to edit kahoots and tailor them to their own lessons and curriculum, but Harrell says the purpose will be to help teachers filter through the options to find high-quality content to use in their classes.
“Teachers are able to find content [on Kahoot], but they still need to spend time curating it and checking for quality,” explains Harrell. “What we are doing now is developing it ourselves and making it easier for them to find that content.”
Ramping up for revenue
Since launching in 2013, Kahoot has offered its platform for free to most users. Harrell says that won’t change in the foreseeable future—but new revenue strategies are already underway for the company, which recently raised $20 million in a Series A round.
In June, Kahoot told EdSurge that the company had yet to begin generating any revenue, but was developing a plan around a premium subscription model for corporate and enterprise users. Since then, the company has given the paid model a spin with some companies, and Harrell says it’s led the company to its first bit of revenue (but won’t share any dollar specifics).
“We already have proof points in the market for the Kahoot premium offering for corporates,” said Falguni Bhuta, head of communications at Kahoot. “We are planning to scale up our corporate offering with the product launch later this year.”
While using its Series A funds to develop the premium product, the Oslo-based company also announced another potential source of revenue for the future: the entertainment industry (sort of).
“Our primary focus is on schools and core curriculum,” says Harrell. “But at the end of the day, Kahoot is an entertainment platform outside the classroom.”
Harrell says his company will be looking to engage entertainment and education “brands” to provide “premium” (e.g. paid) content and kahoots for the platform in the future. “Over time we see content being very much an important part of our revenue plan. We think there is a good business to be made on content.”
The idea ties into its strategy with Studio—but its new target customers might come as a bit of a stretch from its education efforts. One example of what this might look like, he continues, could be if an entertainment studio made “kahoots about stars on a movie to engage the fanbase.” Hollywood might not be as ready for Kahoot as the company would like though; Harrell adds that Kahoot doesn’t have any corporate partners locked in.
